Flash-lights from the Seven Seas

by William L. Stidger

"She told me that it was the custom in Ning-daik for the women just to throw the girl babies under their beds, and they would 'be gone in a day or two.'

"And it is all because of their awful fear that the gods will be displeased if they give birth to a girl baby!"

The second outstanding flash-light of fear comes from Java.

In the chapter on Physical Flash-lights I have described the old volcano of Bromo. It is a terrible thing to look into. Great fissures in the earth, belch thunder, sulphur, fire, and lava. Great rocks as large as wagons shoot into the air to the rim of the two hundred-foot crater, and then drop back with a crash.

For centuries, and even in these days, clandestinely; I am told by men whom I trust; the most beautiful maiden of a certain tribe among the Javanese; and some of the most beautiful women I saw in the Orient were those soft-skinned, soft-voiced, easy-moving, graceful-limbed, swaying-bodied; brown skinned women of Java; she, the fairest of the tribe is taken; and with her the strongest limbed youth; he of the fibered muscles; he of the iron biceps; he of the clean skin; and the two of them are tossed into the belching fiery crater of old Bromo.

"Why?" I asked.

"They think that in that way, they may propitiate the gods of the volcano. Their hearts are constantly filled with fear lest the gods of the volcano become angry and destroy them," said the missionary.

Then he told me of a trip that they made a year before to the top of one of the most inaccessible volcanoes which was then in constant eruption.

"We had a hard time getting native guides. Finally we succeeded. We had to travel fifty miles before we reached the mountain. Then we climbed five miles up its steep side, cutting our own trail as we made our way through the tropical jungle. At last we reached the timber. But before we entered the forest one of the guides came to me and, with the most pitiable and trembling fear in his voice and face, begged us white people not to say anything disrespectful of the mountain; not to joke and laugh, and not to sing; for that would make the mountain angry, and we would all be killed.

"I saw that he was in deadly earnest, and, while I wanted to laugh I looked as solemn as I could, for there was such terror in his face, I knew that if I laughed he would turn and run back to civilization.